Political Reporting Quotes

I've covered a lot of presidential campaigns.

The media increase the political nastiness while distancing voters from those clashes. Citizens become spectators. ­Headline-­driven news emphasizes the extremes, the fights, the hysteria, the sensational. Political reporters, trying to appear objective by quoting two opposing sides to almost every story, mostly sharpen the differences, slighting any centrist position.

I'm a big fan of political editor Allegra Stratton.

I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics, sports, culture, and crime and write it up on deadline.

Landing on 'Morning Joe' wasn't a fluke. I was a poli sci major in college. I interned at the CBS political unit, covered conventions.

Some of the best stories that I've gotten, that others have written about this administration, about the previous administration, you have to rely on anonymous sources.

Political stories in general are tough. They just don't appeal to as wide an audience.

The media is telling you who Donald Trump is and what he's saying and what he's doing, courtesy of anonymous leaks.

Based on the number that they found, The New York Times reported that Hillary [Clinton] had basically clinched the primary 'cause you added the superdelegates to the number of delegates you'd already gotten. But this was on the eve of the California and New Jersey primary.

I'm not seeing tough questions asked on American television. I'm not seeing those correspondents that would question those in power. It's like a club. We are not asking the tough questions.

I was given a White House - well, you will have to ask the White House that. But I asked to attend the White House briefing because I was, you know, because I wanted to report on the activities there.

The sense that I get is that every election cycle, the mainstream press devolves more and more.

I respect and empathize with reporters and editors who must compete in today's environment. And I know full well that when I've been covering campaigns, which I still do, I've made my mistakes and have been far from perfect.

The job of media is the accountability of government.

As reporters, we not only deliver the news of the day. We must also defend the truth. And just because we are pro-truth doesn't mean we are anti-Trump.

The press would rather cover a chanting demonstrator than cover the Speaker of the House.

As someone who's been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new.

Journalists should recalibrate themselves to be more skeptical of the consensus of their peers. That’s because a position that seems to have deep backing from the evidence may really just be a reflection from the echo chamber. You should be looking toward how much evidence there is for a particular position as opposed to how many people hold that position: having 20 independent pieces of evidence that mostly point in the same direction might indeed reflect a powerful consensus, while having 20 like-minded people citing the same warmed-over evidence is much less powerful.

Truly, if you can't cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not be covering a presidential campaign.

When I cover a major presidential, when I vote for a major presidential, or when I cover a major presidential candidate out on the campaign trail, I make it a policy not to vote on the presidential ballot in that election.

I think when Fox News goes to the Megyn Kellys, the Bret Baiers, and people who don't have much experience who haven't covered campaigns, the result is sometimes you have these inane questions that come out and, frankly, waste everybody's time.

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.

I don't think that the press in 2004 was any more unfair to Bush than they were to Kerry.

My job as a reporter, my job as a senior White House correspondent for CNN, is to report the news, but also to highlight and put a microscope on episodes of presidential hypocrisy. And you know, if Donald Trump was going to come after us out on the campaign trail, and as president of the United States through his tweets, I think we are well within our rights to defend ourselves, and also provide that kind of critical coverage to the American people.

I think aggressive, sometimes outspoken reporting from the White House briefing room is expected by the American people.